Donald Sterling reveals racist undertone beneath veneer of feel-good emancipation in modern U.S.

If you believe the hype, we’re living in a post-racial society where discrimination is a thing of the past.

There’s an African-American in the White House: in his second term, so we know the first one wasn’t a fluke.

12 Years a Slave — a scathing indictment of slavery that wielded a cultural heft beyond its meagre box office take — won the Best Picture prize at this year’s Academy Awards.

And Beyoncé and Lupita Nyong’o have been chosen as cultural icons by the two biggest magazines on the planet.

Beyoncé, the highest-earning black musician in history, is listed as the world’s Most Influential Person in Time magazine. Not just as an artist, like Benedict Cumberbatch and Seth Meyers.

Like Hillary Clinton and Jeff Bezos, she’s a titan, an Obama-era power player who can sing, dance and bring home the bacon.

And Nyong’o — who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as a tragic victim in 12 Years a Slave — has been named the year’s Most Beautiful person in People magazine.

Can there be any doubt? Racism is done. Over with. Time to move on.

And then along comes Donald Sterling.

Sterling, the 80-year-old owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has a problem with people like Nyong’o and Beyoncé and Obama.

He likes them. He respects them. He just doesn’t want them coming to his basketball games, or being seen in public with his girlfriend.

“Don’t bring them to my game,” he told his mistress, sounding like a page out of a Jim Crow handbook. “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people.”

Never mind the outrage in basketball circles that saw him turfed from his rarefied perch and banned from the league for life.

There it was in plain view: the racist undertone that exists, has always existed, beneath the veneer of feel-good emancipation in modern America.

The media like to pretend Sterling is an anomaly, a one-of-a-kind aberration who doesn’t reflect the complex fabric of American society.

But that doesn’t explain Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s offhand musings how African-Americans might be “better off as slaves,” radio host Don Imus referring to a women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos,” or other racial flashpoints that emerge every time some loquacious redneck thinks no one is paying attention.

“When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk,” noted President Obama, addressing Sterling’s racial phobia in his typically elegant way. “And that’s what happened here.”

Instead of mealy-mouthed platitudes about equality, the president yanked the issue into perspective for a nation so torn between racist invective and the uncritical worship of black celebrities it somehow lost the plot.

“The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination,” he noted.

“We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often.

“And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why some statements like this stand out so much is because there has been this shift in how we view ourselves.”

It’s a positive statement and, like most of Obama’s rhetoric, conveys a message of hope. But unlike most political pronouncements, it feels plausible.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the media are unprincipled shills who will exploit any opportunity, leap on any bandwagon, to sell product.

Beyoncé will survive. Despite being wildly overpraised by salivating critics, she works in a genre, pop music, that has few issues with African-Americans calling their own shots.

But I don’t for a minute believe Nyong’o, completely unknown a year ago, is anything more than a flavour-of-the-month distraction whose Hollywood career, regardless of talent, will be fleeting.

Yes, it’s possible to win an Oscar nomination by being different, original, outside the box.

Octavia Spencer (The Help), Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and Mo’Nique (Precious) all pulled off this feat.

But a full-time career? Unless you sign on for a sidekick role in an X-Men franchise, as Halle Berry did, or as Carrie Bradshaw’s assistant in a Sex and the City movie, as Hudson did, your days in the spotlight will be numbered.

Because with rare exceptions, Hollywood doesn’t write leading roles for non-white women.

So enjoy your moment in the sun, Lupita. Enjoy what some refer to as the media’s “fetishization” of your “exotic” looks. Just because it’s unlikely to yield long-term rewards on a personal level doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value on a cultural one.

“Some may argue we’re reaching Lupita Nyong’o over-saturation,” writes African-American blogger Dodai Stewart. “I’ll argue that there’s no such thing as too much Lupita Nyong’o. It’s actually extremely vital that we see Lupita Nyong’o — and faces like hers — as often as possible.”

It took 250 years for slavery to be abolished, another hundred until civil rights legislation was enacted.

And it’ll be a few generations more until black celebrities don’t face the conundrum of being simultaneously loved and loathed, deified and demonized, wildly overexposed and woefully underemployed.

In the meantime, as Obama duly noted, the world will continue to shift, day by day, pegging off rednecks one racist explosion at a time.

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